Where were my husband’s family in 1841?
QMy husband’s 3x great grandmother was Virginia Sainsbury, daughter of William Sainsbury, a tallow chandler, and Mary Ann. They were living at 14 Little Wild Street in London when Virginia was baptised at St Clement Danes on 28 December 1828. Virginia married George Davis or Davies on 3 December 1848 at St Luke’s, Chelsea. She was living at 6 Little Smith Street, and he at 1 Marlborough Road. They left the UK for Australia on 16 December 1848, travelling on the ship Mary Shepherd, and arrived on 4 April 1849.
However, I can’t find Virginia on the 1841 census so don’t know who her siblings were, or her mother’s maiden name. George Davis’s father was Thomas, a dairyman, but I can’t find his family on the 1841 census either. Moya Glendinning
AThe 1841 census is notoriously imperfect. It was written in pencil and can be difficult to decipher; it rounds down the ages of those over 15 to the nearest five years; and gives no direct information about place of birth. A less well-known but even more frustrating issue is that the 1841 census books for certain areas of Central London (Middlesex) are missing, because they were lost or unwittingly destroyed.
The 1841 census records for the streets where Virginia and her husband-to-be were living in 1848 survive – but we don’t know exactly where either of these characters was living seven years earlier in 1841. Ancestry gives a table of the areas where census records are known to be missing ( search. ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=8978). If Virginia and George were living in the parish of St Luke’s (Islington) in any of the following areas: Old Street; West Finsbury; Golden Lane or Whitecross Street, their information is lost. Also missing are 1841 census records for all of Paddington and Brompton, and some of those for Kensal Green.
The whole Sainsbury family might have been living in one of these (now invisible) areas. Alternatively, Virginia might simply not have been at home with the most likely candidates for her parents who appear on the 1841 census, William and Mary Ann Sainsbury and their other children, living in Fleet Street. After all, she would have been 12 – old enough, perhaps, to be working as a servant in one of the nearby missing census areas. Alternatively, if Virginia’s parents were the William and Mary Ann Sainsbury living in Pratt’s Buildings, St Luke’s, Chelsea, in 1851, then you might potentially find clues to the family history in Market Lavington, Wiltshire, where that William said he came from.
Ruth Symes